‘Deadpool 2’ Screenwriters on Potential Release Dates: ‘No One Will Want to Come Out the Same Weekend’

Anyone who ever scrolls through the occasional Business Insider article knows that disruptors — companies that enter a marketplace and change the way people do business — don’t stay disruptors for very long. Take an organization like Uber. For years, Uber was the scrappy little underdog, a technology startup that used technology to upend the established taxi market. In the past few years, however, Uber has gone from the underdog to the dominant player, the company that other technology startups are looking to take down. Success breeds imitation, and imitation breeds improvement.

That’s the example that came to mind as I was reading about rumors for a potential Deadpool 2release date. As part of their publicity for Life, Deadpool 2 screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick spoke with The Hollywood Reporterabout whether their film will be headed to theaters in summer or fall of 2018 and what it eels like to be the alpha dog on the release calendar this time out:

We don’t want to put the cart before the horse, and often times with release dates that happens. You end up racing and you end up being forced to do something you’re not happy with and the great thing about Deadpool is we spent a career trying to duck other movies. “How do we get off the release date of this or that?” I think in most cases, people are going to have to duck us. Fox is probably going to be able to drop that thing on a date and everyone else is going to scatter, because no one will want to come out the same weekend.

It wasn’t that long ago that Deadpoolwas a movie dumped in an otherwise dead part of the year, but the huge box office returns and rabid fandom surrounding the film means that Deadpool 2 will no longer be the scrappy underdog but the Hollywood powerhouse when it’s release. That means that Deadpool can have its pick of release dates — summer, fall, Christmas weekend — and, like the screenwriters note, other films would rather scatter than compete at the box office with the film on its opening weekend. As the Deadpool franchise continues to spit out sequels, it will be interesting to see how whether the franchise can adjust to remain fresh as other people steal liberally from their formula. You can only be the alpha dog for so long.